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Whenever anything extraordinary is done in American municipal politics, whether for good or for evil, you can trace it almost invariably to one man. The people do not do it. Neither do the 'gangs,' 'combines,' or political parties.

Lincoln Steffens

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Lincoln Steffens
Age: 70 †
Born: 1866
Born: April 6
Died: 1936
Died: August 9
Autobiographer
Journalist
San Francisco County
California
Lincoln Austin Steffens
Evil
Whenever
Political
Extraordinary
Municipal
Anything
Neither
Gangs
Done
Almost
Combines
Good
Politics
Invariably
Men
Party
Trace
People
American
Gang
Whether
Parties

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My father was slower, but he was severer than my mother, who was quick but light and irregular in discipline.
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If we would vote in mass on the more promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the other party that is in - then, I say, the commercial politician would feel a demand for good government and he would supply it.
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It is our knowledge - the things we are sure of - that makes the world go wrong and keeps us from seeing and learning.
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The only thing worth having in an earthly existence is a sense of humor.
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We know that there is no absolute knowledge, that there are only theories but we forget this. The better educated we are, the harder we believe in axioms.
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Boston has carried the practice of hypocrisy to the n-th degree of refinement, grace, and failure.
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So youve been over into Russia? said Bernard Baruch, and I answered very literally, I have been over into the future and it works.
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If we would leave parties to the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and cities, and States, and nation.
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Power is what men seek, and any group that gets it will abuse it. It is the same story.
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In all cities, the better classes - the business men - are the sources of corruption, but they are so rarely pursued and caught that we do not fully realize whence the trouble comes.
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In science, probably ninety-nine percent of the knowable has to be discovered. We know only a few streaks about astronomy. We are only beginning to imagine the force and composition of the atom. Physics has not yet found any indivisible matter, or psychology a sensible soul.
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The Soviet government sprouted and grew out of the habits, the psychology, and the condition of the Russian people. It fitted them. They understand it.
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My father required me to honor my father and my mother too much to put up games on them. I did on occasion.
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My father seemed always to know not only what I was doing, but what I was being.
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Chicago will give you a chance. The sporting spirit is the spirit of Chicago.
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I hunted far enough to suspect that the Fathers of the Republic who wrote our Sacred Constitution of the United States not only did not, but did not want to, establish a democratic government.
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I never heard a Christian sermon preached in a church.
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It is possible to get an education at a university. It has been done not often.
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Revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government.
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My father made with me one serious mistake which I see parents about me making. He got himself somehow into the awkward position of an authority I thought he knew and was right on everything - for a while.
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